The Luckiest
by Clare DeTamble
Summary: There are three things you need to know in life. Jesscentric. Complete.


**Disclaimer: **I, of course, do not own _Gilmore Girls. _Credit for the title goes to the brilliance of **fulfilled **and Ben Folds. I don't own them, either.

My dad was a philosophical kind of guy, but in a quiet way. He wasn't the type to share the thoughts that occurred to him in speech. He preferred to write about them instead. But he didn't quite share that either – he basically scribbled them down as they came to him in the margins of someone else's thoughts—usually Dostoevsky or Bukowski.

There was one time, however, when he shared something with me that I'll never forget. It was a fall night—nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps a little chilly. I was sitting on the porch after everyone had gone to sleep, working on a charcoal of the moon. He came out quietly, and I only knew he was behind me after hearing the distinct slap of the soles of Converses on the porch. How he got the front door—and the storm door—opened so quietly is something I've never figured out.

He looked a little surprised to see me, but he just nodded in acknowledgement and sat down next to me, his legs stretched out to the bottom stair. He opened his book to the most recently dog-eared page and read, squinting in the dimness of the porch light. I continued to work on my drawing, my hand moving to mimic the shadows on the moon as his moved to turn the pages of his book. I can't remember what he was reading. It may have been Hemingway, but I can't be sure.

Then, suddenly, slammed his book closed and turned to me. I scratched a line across my page in surprise, so dark that it couldn't be rubbed out.

"You know," he said, and I looked up at him, his dark eyes barely visible in the night. I've often wished that I'd gotten his eyes—they seemed more mysterious, more pensive than mine. My own eyes – mom's crystal blue – glowed eerily.

"There are three things you need to know in life."

I half expected him to make a comment about sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but there was something in his face—the way his lips were drawn into a straight line instead of twisted into a smirk, or perhaps the way his forehead creased slightly—that told me he was serious.

"Only three things. The first is that you're going to die."

I'm sure there was a crease in my own forehead after that opening.

"The second is that you need to find at least one person you want to die with. One person you can't bear to be without.

"And the third—and this is the most important—is that you have to let that person _know_ that you can't bear to be without them. You can't build walls around yourself and shut everyone else out. You can't pretend that your emotions aren't there, because they _are_. You can't get hurt once and decide not to love anyone ever again, because if you do, your live will be seriously fucked up."

He cleared his throat and looked into my face to see if I was comprehending what he was saying. I wasn't. He closed his lips tightly, in silent apology for his language, before speaking again.

"Don't be afraid of feeling," he continued. "Don't hurt the people who love you by denying them the same thing. Because you're going to die anyway. There's no point in being lonely until then."

He paused, his eyes leaving mine for a second.

"And if you get lucky," he added, "you might find more than one person you can't bear to be without."

Then he picked up his book, stood, and pressed a kiss to my hair.

"But that's only if you're lucky," he said as he turned into the house.

I sat and thought about what he was saying for a while. I didn't really understand _what _he told me, and why he told it to me that night.

As I got older, I heard stories about my dad's life. I learned that his father had abandoned him and his mother had neglected him. I heard about the way he treated his uncle when he came here, and how long it took for him to get things right with my mother.

Later, I learned that he was abused as a child, and as he grew up, he turned down the wrong path to drugs and alcohol. I learned that he'd been the lonely one he spoke of.

My father battled with cancer for the last five years of his life, and died too young. In a way, I was glad to see him go. He'd been so degraded by his disease—so tired and in so much pain, that I knew it was time for him to be at peace.

Going through his things, I found a copy of my birth certificate. And like everything else, he'd written his thoughts in the margin.

He only wrote one word: luck.

Before he died, he'd said that he wanted to leave me his luck. Because after everything he'd been through in his life, the pain of his childhood and the torment of his cancer, he truly believed he was lucky.

He didn't believe in the afterlife, but sometimes, I swear I can see a streak of darkness across the moon. And I know it's him, reminding me that he's always right.

Because he is.


End file.
